(William) John Morgan

Professor W. John Morgan is Professor and UNESCO Chair of the Political Economy of Education and Senior Fellow, China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. He is also Honorary Professor, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University; and a Distinguished Professor of the International Institute of Adult Education and Lifelong Learning..

He was Chairman of the UK's National Commission for UNESCO between 2010 and 2014 and convened the Director-General's Consultation of the National Commissions of Europe and North America. In 2013 he was appointed Co-Chair of the Director General of UNESCO's Senior Experts' Group on Re-thinking Education for the 21st Century. Between 2002 and 2008 he was a Commonwealth Scholarship Commissioner for the United Kingdom and chaired its Academic Staff Fellowships and Professional Fellowships committees. He was also visiting professorial fellow of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Studies, the University of London between 2002-2005. In 2007 he became a patron of the Land Mines Disabilities Trust; in 2008 he was appointed a Distinguished Professor of the International Institute of Adult and Lifelong Education; in 2009 was invited to present the James V. Draper Memorial Lecture in New Delhi; in 2010 was awarded the honorary degree of D. Sc. by the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences; in 2011 was key-note speaker to the Hong Kong Teachers' Association annual conference on 'The Privatization of Higher Education'; and, in the same year, lead a seminar on 'The Idea of a University as a Public Good' at the annual conference of the UK's Quality Assurance Association. A Senior Fellow of the China Policy Institute, his book Higher Education Reform in China: Beyond the Expansion, (Ed., with B. Wu) was published recently as a paperback, Routledge, London, 2013. He is also interested in peace education and (with A. Guilherme), has published a monograph on Buber and Education: Dialogue as conflict resolution, Routledge, London, 2014. He has published several other monographs and edited books, as well as many articles in journals and book chapters; is an editorial board or corresponding member of several international journals; and an academic adviser to the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Department for International Development, the International Labour Organization, and to the World Bank. His current research and publication focuses on post-school education and economic and social change in the BRICS countries, especially China and Russia. He has twice been invited to take part in the Beijing Forum; and has guest-edited special issues of the European Journal of Education on 'European-Chinese Cooperation in Education' and on 'Higher Education in Russia'; and of the Journal of Moral Education on 'Communist and post-Communist societies.' In addition to other teaching within the School of Education, he has supervised successfully fifty-seven doctoral candidates and post-doctoral fellows; many of these were international students now in senior academic or policy posts in their home countries. He remains a current doctoral supervisor and examiner (both internally and externally); is Chair of the School of Education's Progress Review Panel for doctoral students; and of its Research Ethics Committee (with specific responsibility for ethical approval of academic staff research). He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; of the Royal Anthropological Institute; and of the Learned Society of Wales; and an Honorary Professor of the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Wales. Go to http://nottingham.ac.uk/education/people/unesco-chair for more details and a list of Open Access publications.

Experience

–present

Professor and UNESCO Chair of the Political Economy of Education and Senior Fellow, China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham